What a disaster.  I got back from Taiwan on Friday night, went for a row on Saturday which was mostly delightful, except for it being a bit choppy in the basin.

Then things went downhill.  Because of jetlag, I did not sleep at all on Saturday night.  Not a wink.  It didn’t help that I needed to get up at 4:30am to catch a plane to St. Louis, but nothing I could do would help me fall asleep.  I finally gave up at 3:30, took a shower and headed off to the airport.

I had a nice time in St. Louis.  My daughter is living out there and we hadn’t had a chance to see her since the spring.  There was no time for any training.  My wife and I jetted back home on Monday morning.  By late afternoon, I was down with a stomach bug.

I was basically in bed from 4pm Monday until 2pm Tuesday, and very wobbly for the rest of the day.  I decided to sleep instead of training this morning.  I still feel under the weather, but I might try a short erg session later today, and try to get back on the water tomorrow.

So, this represents a 3 day break in training, and a lot more days off over the past two weeks than normal, and hardly any rowing.  I’m not sure how far back this puts me in terms of race prep, but I’m sure it won’t be pretty.

I was wondering how much effect it would have so I did a little digging.  On the Rowing Illustrated boards, I found a discussion about the topic.  This was a report out of how a high school team detrained over christmas break.  The thread included a reference to a review article on detraining.

This said that the main effect over the first week is loss of blood volume…

With detraining of endurance-trained athletes blood volume is reduced by 5-12% within the first two days. This reduction in blood volume is the primary reason for the observed rapid decline in cardiovascular function. As a direct result there is a decrease in cardiac output (amount of blood pumped per minute) and stroke volume (amount of blood pumped per beat) with an attendant increase in heart rate during sub maximal exercise – consistent with the equation

This doesn’t completely address how long it takes to restore blood volume, but the rule of thumb that I’ve read is 2x the number of days off.  So, the bottom line is that I should be back on track in a week or so.